Royal Toast

Cuneiform; 2010

Find it at:

It's fun to grapple with music that doesn't fit a prescribed notion of genre-- it forces you to listen a little harder and think a little more about actual sound. For instance, I could call the Claudia Quintet "post-jazz" or something similar, but without getting into the details of the music, you wouldn't know what that means. "Jazz" itself is a term that doesn't mean a whole lot anymore without modifying it-- the tent pitched by the word is huge. Here, when I say that the Claudia Quintet combine elements of jazz and modern chamber music, the jazz I'm referring to is mostly the post-bop stuff that's been swirling around in various permutations since the early 1960s, small ensemble music that doesn't necessarily lean on swung rhythms, is built on modal composition, and doesn't fear dipping into the avant-garde.

On Royal Toast, the Quintet, led by drummer John Hollenbeck and here augmented to a sextet by pianist Gary Versace, moves easily between improvisation and intricately arranged composition. For instance, "Sphinx" spends most of its first minute charging through a series of seemingly disconnected phrases that make more sense as they're repeated and combined, then pulls back for an almost funky midsection in which Chris Speed gets a chance to wail a bit on his clarinet. Bassist Drew Gress gets a little spotlight, too, almost as a reward for holding down the hyperactive low-end that gives everyone else their exploratory foundation on the rest of the song.

This is the group's fifth album, and they're clearly good at reading each other and knowing when to shift the rhythm to help a soloist escape a cul de sac. The band's unorthodox instrumentation-- bass, drums, reeds, accordion, and vibraphone-- gives it a distinct sonic signature. Ted Reichman's accordion is used in every conceivable way, playing leads, soloing, harmonizing with the clarinet, and in some of the album's slowest and most rewarding passages, hypnotically vamping in a static dance with Matt Moran's vibraphone. Though they can clang along with the best of them, they do quiet and meditative well. These more placid moments balance out the record's stormier passages and offer respite from fussy sections where the shifts in rhythm and time signature are a bit too much.

It's fitting they'd land on the Cuneiform label. The overall effect the band gives off is that of a more well-adjusted cousin to doom-obsessed labelmates Univers Zero, offering the sturm without so much of the drang. I wouldn't mind hearing Hollenbeck use the group to explore his softer side, because the pulsing comedowns on this record are some of its most arresting moments, even though the in-betweenness makes it unique and enjoyable on its own merits.